


crimson.

by donnatroy



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: #fake deep, Angst, Death, F/M, Healing, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Intimacy, Moving On, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Self-Worth Issues, Sex, Slow Burn, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-19 16:34:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11901729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donnatroy/pseuds/donnatroy
Summary: After your father dies, you move back to Hell’s Kitchen to help your sister take care of his affairs, where you meet pro bono attorney Matt Murdock, who is all too happy to help.In the wake of his death, you're left dealing with deep seeded issues, from your father to yourself. You want nothing more than to forget them.Matt is all too happy to help you with this too.





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: I have decided to rewrite this after taking a year-long break from it.

Your mother stands in the kitchen, making you and your sister breakfast and humming along to a song on the radio, occasionally glancing to the TV in the living room. You sit at the table with your back to her, pouting and arms crossed over your chest. You were caught stealing out of the little box of cookies by your mother. 

“In trouble again? You take after your daddy,” he smiles down at you and holds up a cookie for you.

“Don’t give her that. She’s in trouble,” your mother scolds you both, flipping an egg in the frying pan and leans over to your father, snatching the cookie out of his hand.

Your grin melts back into a pout, watching as she sets the cookie on the counter and turning the radio off, signaling that breakfast is done. She sets plates of food on the table, which you dig into, hungry and itching to go to school. Today was show and tell and you desperately wanted to tell the class about your new boots.

Just as she sets down the plate of toast, the small television in the next room catches her attention. Nobody had noticed but you. Your sister was babbling away about something you didn’t understand. Probably math. And your father was listening intently to her. She wanders to the small living room and sits on the couch worn from years of use. A secondhand couch that your mother had picked out at a Goodwill. Its green upholstery had faded into something close to a grey with strings coming up from where you pick at it when your parents watch something boring. 

You sit on the floor next to her legs, watching the news with her. You glance up, unsure of what you’re hearing, you know someone is hurt, but that’s all, the details are a little vague to you since you’d come in after her. 

“Oh, that poor boy,” she says, a hand over her heart and the other on top of your head, stroking your hair lightly, “Go eat, sweetheart.”

* * *

 

Your new rainboots are filthy already, the pretty crimson hidden beneath the caked mud, and you’d only worn them this once. Your mother would be unhappy about it, but smile anyway, put a hand on your back and lead you to the fire escape to help you wash them. 

You grab your sister’s hand and tug to remind her that you’re still there. She has problems with that, remembering that she needs to look out for you and needs to stop being self-absorbed, at least that’s what your mother says, you don’t understand what she says. That’s okay though, you know that she’s always right.

You skip and hum a little song you learned from other kids in your class as your sister rolls her eyes, tugging you back by your hand when you get too far ahead of her.

When you turn the corner, she freezes, pushing you behind her back in an attempt to shield you. You can barely see around her, but you can hear a sharp intake of breath from above you and feel her shake. She blocks all your attempts to peek past her, but she can’t block out the flashing lights of the police car and ambulance that sits outside of your building. 

You’re finally able to break out of the grip she has on you and you can hear her shrill cry of “no!” but you ignore her, your curiosity and anger of being kept out of things coming out. You run the short distance to the front steps of the building and see your father wrapped in a blanket, face buried in his hands. You just stand there, looking at him, trying to put together where your mother is when the stretcher rolls out of the front door. 

A white sheet hangs to the lump on the stretcher, and the paramedics either avoid looking at you or give you a look of pity. You may be young, but you know what this means.


	2. over and over.

Staying in one place for too long was never an option for you. It's like it's coded in your DNA from the years you spent moving from place to place because of your father's job after your mother died. Years of your life, stability almost nonexistent, were wasted packing and unpacking boxes. You didn’t realize though, that that was normal for other kids your age, to move around so much, even ones that were children of military parents. You can’t remember staying long enough in one place to finish a full year of school. Must have been before your mother died. But even as an adult, it seemed the habit, the procedure and order of packing, stuck with you. 

You'd only stayed in one place long enough to get a teaching degree.

After you graduated, you were off. Buying a ticket on the fly to wherever seemed most appealing in the moment and applying to jobs at the schools in the area, most times you didn’t get the job, but that’s okay, there was usually some desperate diner that needed another waitress, or a nursing home on its last legs looking for more kitchen or laundry staff.

* * *

 

You toss and turn all night, something in the pit of your stomach churning, keeping you up despite the fact that your eyes and brain were demanding that you go to sleep. The day had been long with everything that could go wrong going wrong at work, wearing and stretching you thin beyond your capabilities, because you were the only competent employee. Maybe not competent, but levelheaded, thinking clear despite the pressing situation and the cook yelling in your ear about a situation you couldn’t control.

Maybe it was time to stop, to actually become serious about teaching. You’d spent years getting your damn degree. Why the hell weren’t you using it? You actually like kids, you like teaching, you like the environment of school. Nothing made sense to you about your current situation. 

You bite your lip, staring at the crack in the ceiling, making a shape that you couldn’t quite make out. It looked like a cloud, or maybe a dinosaur, you could never settle on which it was.

Your phone buzzing gives you a distraction from the whirling in your gut, something you’re thankful for, up until you see the time. Three o’clock. Fuck. What the hell were you doing up all night? You’ve got another shift in five hours.

What’s even more confusing is your sister’s number on your screen. Isn’t it six where she is? You’d never known her to get up early.

“Hello?” you hope that she can’t tell your tired, she’ll only mother you. Since she adopted, she’d become more smothering, combined with the fact that she’s your older sister, always trying to look out for you.

“Hey, I know it’s early for you-”

“I don’t think early is even the word to describe three in the morning,” you push yourself up and rub your eye, “What’s up?”

“He’s... Dad’s dead,” your sister’s shuttering gasp, you know it all too well. This was just the prelude, “He died an hour ago.”

“O _h,”_ you’re breathless and unable to respond properly, “I... I’ll buy a ticket.”

You hang up unprompted, too shocked with yourself and your words. It’s not like you had much of a connection with him anymore. You hadn’t seen him since your high school graduation. You’d packed your bags immediately and went to stay with your sister that summer.

You don't know how to feel about it. You want to be sad, you should be sad. He is- was your father. He raised you and your sister but he was never there, not fully anyway. He was never the same after your mother died, he never recovered from that. And neither you nor your sister did either, but you could still function, you had to. You don't remember what had happened when your mother died, you were only six when it happened. It's not like you knew exactly how she died. Being the youngest, even as an adult meant you were kept out of family affairs, and maybe it was your fault- a little- you’d taken off as soon as you could and only talked to your sister, and she was always so concerned with protecting you after your mother died. 

He was a shell of his former self, taken further in with the combination of what he’d seen and done in the Army. And maybe it isn't an excuse for you to not feel sad, to still hate him. Maybe you could have forgiven him or found some sympathy had he not taken up drinking, or at least drinking more than he already did. 

Your chest hurts, taking away from the churning in your stomach. You’re not sure if you can go home, but you know you have to. For your sister. 

You turn on the light next to your bed, averting your eyes from the sudden brightness. You chalk your slowness to get up, to walk to where your laptop sits on a desk, to tiredness, to laziness, not to the hesitance you feel. Going back to New York sounds like hell.

It’s easy enough to find a flight to JFK Airport, but you can’t find it in you to buy it. You let the cursor hovers over the purchase button.

You had never wanted to go back there, that’s what you told yourself and other people. But a small part of you did want to go back; Hell's Kitchen was your home, the first place you knew. But it didn't last for long. Six years there, your home and your life, the only thing you had known, and you had been uprooted, packed up and gone to the other side of the country.

_"That's where the jobs are, baby girl,"_  he had said, lifting up a box that was filled to the brim with your toys while you sat on the edge of your bed, legs swinging and your favorite stuffed animal in your arms, hugged tightly to your chest,  _"We'll come back one day. Besides, you'll like Nevada."_

You had felt tempted to go back after you'd graduated from college, wanting to relive a part of the past that had been idyllic, before shit had hit the fan for your small family. See the sights and revisit parks you had frequented. But when you had heard from your sister, the night before you'd bought a ticket for New York, she had called to congratulate you and it had come up that he had moved back to Hell's Kitchen when you left for college and cut off contact with him.

He moved back into your childhood home and you had felt a surge of anger because how dare he do that. He had no right to do that. Not after what he’d done. Your sister said that he’d wanted to be closer to your mother, feel that connection with her again. He didn’t deserve that.

It’s hard enough to look over the flight information, but to spend money on it, to commit to it makes you want to double over. You confirm the purchase without a second thought, trying to get over with soon so you don’t have time to make yourself flee from the situation. You shut your laptop, heart speeding up at your actions and anxiety rising.

You’ll need to pack again.

* * *

 

You get out of a cab that smells of burnt out cigarettes, stale alcohol and vomit and it's just like coming home from school and finding him passed out on the couch with beer bottles littered around him. 

You readjust the strap of your bag on your shoulder and look up at the small building, nestled between two nicer ones. Vines grow up the sides of the discolored and chipped bricks, making it into the grout, making it impossible to tell brick from brick. The staircase railing and fire escapes have rusted from the pearly white you remember to an ugly copper, chipping and falling, gathering on the concrete along with broken glass and garbage spreading out from the alleyway.

He'd bought the entire building, trying his hand as a landlord, which didn’t end well.

Your sister sits on the steps, her leg bouncing up and down and her phone clutched in her hands. Despite looking exhausted, she’s just as beautiful as ever and she looks almost relieved when she sees you standing there.

"You came. I almost thought that you were lying," she chuckles weakly and stands up, arms open for you. Her eyes are red and puffy, lips chapped. She looked the same after her first serious girlfriend broke up with her.

You just nod and stuff your hands in your pockets, "I said I would be here."

She puts her arms down when she realizes you won't hug her and looks awkward for a moment before grabbing your suitcase, putting on a big smile on. She looks so much like your mother. It had made you jealous at one point, so much so that you tried to cut her hair when she slept, just to take away the similarity. Somewhere in your mind, you thought it was how her hair framed her face that made her look like your mother. Your sister caught you before you could go through with it. You just cried, dropping the dull scissors on her pillow and she picked you up and tucked you into the blankets with her.

"C'mon, let's get you settled."

* * *

 

It's like he'd tried to trap himself in time in the apartment. It looks exactly as you remember it. The furniture- some having been replaced- were put in the same position. Pictures littered the walls, both old and new. Your mother seems to be the center of it all. Most of the pictures had her in them, smiling widely, her favorite red lipstick always gracing her lips, but there’s a sadness in it that you notice. You can see some, the later ones, where she doesn’t look present, like something had sapped the energy out of her, draining and taking and draining her some more. 

You turn away from the pictures. This place, your home, feels haunted by her like she’d never left, and maybe a part of her didn’t because there’s evidence of her everywhere. Nothing is out of place. Maybe she possessed your father and set everything straight for him. 

Your sister turns to you, smiling weakly as she leads you to your old bedroom. Her hand is warm against yours; it’s sickly almost how sweaty it makes you. If there’s one thing you didn’t miss about Hell’s Kitchen is the humidity.

As hard as it is to, the breath is knocked out of you and your hand flies to the base of your throat, fingers splaying across your skin. It’s like something out of a dream or a memory, to stand in your old room, decorated how you remember it when you were a child. 

He’d decorated your old shared room the exact same as it had been when you were six and she was sixteen. The room split almost exactly in half with the different paints. Your side a soft, calming pink, befitting for a six-year-old girl; her side was a harsh purple, decorated with posters of her favorite bands and movies. The newest edition would be how the edges are frayed and your bedding fresh, crisp, never been wrinkled, unlike your sister’s side. She must have stayed over often toward the end.

You feel like a stranger when you sit on the bed, your bag at your feet and the familiar creaking of the bed frame welcoming you. Your hand runs over the comforter, the stiffness making you grimace. It feels wrong to come back to this. 

You can’t wait to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Feedback is appreciated.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Feedback is appreciated!


End file.
